[Grammar] Having debates's cool

[Charlie Bernstein]

I disagree with Charlie about The house's on fire. . . .

Really? You don't like debates's but do like house's?

Hm.

 

[emsr2d2]

I can't ever imagine anyone using "The house's on fire". In spoken English, the two separate words "house" and "is" are clear, and would be transcribed as such.
At a stretch, I would say that "The house has burnt down" would sound, in spoken English, a little like "The house's burnt down". That's only because we regularly pronounce "has" without the "h" and turning the "as" part into more like "uhz" (sorry, I don't do phonetic symbols!) It would never be written that way, though.

 

[Sneymarin]

You don't understand the purpose of contractions if you think their purpose is to make things harder to say. Furthermore, arguing accomplishes nothing. If you disagree, fine. But nobody is going to change their mind because of that.

I understand why contractions are used, but I was interested in why some contractions are acceptable and some not even though they have a similar structure. I wasn't trying to change your mind, but rather trying to understand better by clearing my doubts.

Thank you to everyone who helped me.

Also, I would like to ask about the corrections I received to one of my previous messages:

Is the only reason "That dog's barking too loudly" works and "Talking to James's a total waste of time" doesn't that I contracted "is" after a noun ending in an "s"?

GoesStation corrected my message by removing "doesn't" while Charlie Bernstein added an "is" after my "doesn't".

I think that removing is would just remove part of the original structure and make the sentence wrong, while adding "is" after "doesn't" seems wrong to me as well since there's already "is" at the beginning of the question. In this sentence that has a similar structure to the one in my original sentence both removing "am not" and adding "is" after "am not" seems weird to me:

"Is the only reason Paul is rich and I am not (rich) that he was luckier than me?"

I was thinking of asking this on another thread but I thought I would ask here since you already know the context. Thank you.

 

[GoesStation]

My answer was wrong. Ignore it.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

. . . Also, I would like to ask about the corrections I received to one of my previous messages: . . . Charlie Bernstein added an "is" after my "doesn't". . . .

You mean here: "Is the only reason "That dog's barking too loudly" works and "Talking to James's a total waste of time" doesn't is that I contracted "is" after a noun ending in an "s"?"

Oops. My mistake. Your first word was Is, so there was no reason to add it.